


Second Chances Timeline

by deepandlovelydark, Tanista



Series: Second Chances [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Nonfiction, Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanista/pseuds/Tanista
Summary: A short chronology of Mission City, plus other important information to keep everything straight. Adapted from Tanista's "Domestic Adventures" timeline.





	1. Chronology of stories and events

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers, natch.

1895: Mission City, a small logging community in eastern Minnesota, is officially incorporated.

1912: Harry Jackson born.

1919: Prohibition. The Parker family, including young rapscallion Betty Parker, proceed to make a fortune off Canadian bootlegging and homemade moonshine.

1930: Mission City wins the bidding for a new Federal Correctional Institute. Celia Jackson opens the Chrysanthemum Cafe, to cater to the construction workers (like her husband Harry).

1932\. The FCI is completed, and prisoners are moved in. The consequent revenue cushions Mission City from the worst effects of the Great Depression.

1945: Michael David Grahme born, in Oregon.

1948: Allison Cassandra (Allie) born to Ellen and James MacGyver, in Mission City.

1951: Angus MacGyver (Mac) born. As is Ellen Stuart.

1952: Jack Dalton born, in Texas.

1959: Nikki Carpenter born, in the District of Columbia.

1961: James MacGyver and Celia Jackson die in a car crash.

1961: Winifred Cooke born, and christened with a name he'll do his best to erase from history.

1962: Harry Jackson leaves Minnesota, to help support his daughter and grandchildren by taking a job in Alaska. Not long after, Mac accidentally kills his friend Jesse in a gun accident, and starts messing about with liquor. (Rough year for him.) Fortunately, it’s the same year that Jack Dalton ends up in Mission City, after a short stint in Wisconsin. **Hey diddle diddle**

1964: Penelope Parker (Penny) born, in Massachusetts.

1966: Ashton Cooke born, in Sussex.

1967: Allison marries Michael while attending university, and stays on the West Coast. They spend the next few years in and out of grad school, a commune in Seattle, and occasionally prison when their nonviolence protests go wrong.

1968: Christopher James (Chris) born to Allison and Michael. Mac gets engaged. **First Kisses**

1969: Mac marries Ellen Stuart, shortly before their high school graduation. They take over running the Chrysanthemum Cafe. Also, Penny's first visit to Mission City and the cafe. **All the day**

1971: Michael and Allison move to Oregon; he teaches middle school, she pursues a postgraduate degree in psychology at university.

1972: Rebecca Ellen (Becky) born, with Mac's help.  **Special Delivery**

1972: Penny Parker contrives to move to Mission City, under the care of her Aunt Betty.

1973: The FCI closes, leaving Mission City destitute. **Lemon Tree**

1974: A little miracle brightens Mac’s day. **Sunshine Amid the Gloom**

1975: Mac starts working on his best ever invention, a non-polluting boat impeller. It doesn’t end well.

1976: Murdoc's first foray to America- and his first encounter with the DXS. **Morningstar**

1978: Scientifically proving the existence of a certain Jolly Old Elf on the most magical night of the year. Or, Mac and Becky wait up for Santa. **'Twas the Night**

1981: Mac and Allison's mother dies.

1981: Nobody in the family takes it very well.  **to everything there is a season**

1982: To help cushion the financial burden from a rather extraordinarily complicated lawsuit Mac’s got them involved in, Ellen Stuart takes a job in local television.

1983: And loses it. Mac and Ellen divorce in November.

1984: Jack does his best to cheer Mac up, in the aftermath. **Movie Night**

1986: Allison, Michael and Chris die in another car crash in May. Mac takes in Becky.  **Those Left Behind**

1986: Then promptly goes broke after one last calamity from the aforementioned lawsuit. **for sale: one jeep, absolution thrown in free**

1986: Which doesn't stop him taking care of Becky, though unfortunately it precipitates the infamous French Toast Incident. **Pain perdu**

1986: Jack gets out after spending a year and a half in prison, just in time to help out in the aftermath. **Sublimation**

1986: Mac and Becky get caught in an unexpected blizzard; good thing Jack's trailer is nearby to weather the storm.  **Blueberry Blues**

1986: Ellen marries Ralph Jerico; Mac picks up an archrival. **Cardinal Vices**

1987: Becky does her best to adapt to her new life, though not without some trouble with bullies. **Break the Ice**

1987: Murdoc shows up in Mission City in October, and immediately falls for a certain blonde hockey fanatic. **Second Chances**

1989: Somebody steals Jack's cab. Matters escalate from there. **Roaming With A Hungry Heart**

1989: Chrysalis. **Ten Different Ways to Fire a Gun**

1989: Becky makes a friend. Also an explosion, among other things. The Becky half of **Compare and Contrast**

1990: Another busy year. Mac escapes Mission City with Murdoc in April, Ellen leaves Jerico. Becky graduates from high school, and sells the coffee shop to Penny Parker before setting off on a tour of America with Jack.

1990: Mac's transition to his new job goes swimmingly. The Mac half of **Compare and Contrast**

1991: North. **Here at the end of the world**

1992: In which Harry shows up again, after thirty years, and some reckonings come due. **"Freedom and peace and some people who don't like either."**

1992: Cosy domestic fluff. Finally. **Pancake Day**

1992: Four parties allows for poker night. **All In**

1993: Jack falls for an Obvious Trap. Big time. **Original Sin**

1994: Murdoc contemplates retiring from the assassination business. Also, a way to connect with Becky. **At thy will**

1995: Two players in the Great Game make their own moves, separately and together. **White Queen, Black Knight**

1969-1993: Non-canonical, basically further alternate explorations. **Sideways in Time  
**

2012: Exactly what it sounds like, I'm afraid. One tragic demise, and how the survivors cope. **Major Character Death**


	2. A brief explanation of the '85/'16 fusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days, I will get around to the Becky-at-spy-camp crossover fic I'm planning, for which this is all setup.
> 
> It'll take place at the same time as "Original Sin," in other words quite a way into the series...which is why this goes on so long.

It's the early '90s. Angus MacGyver is a forty-something SAK enthusiast with a mullet, who spent twenty years stuck working as a barista in Mission City, Minnesota. These days he works with Murdoc ('80s iteration) as an assassin for hire. Murdoc is ten years younger, considerably more experienced in the Great Game's workings, and passionately in love with MacGyver. He's also a freelancer for the Phoenix Foundation, of which more anon. 

When MacGyver isn't out on espionage missions, he's typically staying at his Texas ranch house, co-owned by him and Jack Dalton ('80s iteration)- who's the love of his life, and his best friend since childhood. Jack Dalton is a mischievous, curiously innocent pilot with a keen appetite for everything except intelligence work, although he has a way of getting roped into Mac's scheming. At least to the extent of transporting him to wherever the mission is this time; he maintains a successful (occasionally questionable) business as a pilot-for-hire. Mac, Jack and Murdoc have an awkward sort of love triangle going on, the details of which they're still working out.

MacGyver has a niece, named Becky Grahme, who he adopted after his sister and her husband died in a car crash. She's a college student at Western Tech (LA), firmly devoted to social justice causes, and nurses an ambition of becoming a successful spy- but a pacifist one. No guns. 

Her best friend (aside from her uncle, who she loves unreservedly despite his profession) is Ashton Cooke. She's Murdoc's younger sister; teenaged Murdoc blagged his way into a job with HIT (Homicide International Trust) in order to get them out of their abusive home situation. For various reasons, including being related to someone so notorious in the Great Game, Ashton has made a practice of maintaining several cover identities at all times. Her current primary is Samantha Cage, supposed Australian, supposed ex-CIA agent, and any number of other supposeds which may or may not have any basis in reality whatsoever. 

Her other good friend is Wilt Bozer (they met while participating in a nonviolence march during the Rodney King riots). He's a Florida special effects artist who came to LA for his career, moving in with his aunt Cynthia. Cynthia runs the Challengers Club, which is underwritten by the Phoenix Foundation- but that doesn't mean she has to trust them. When the think tank started trying to headhunt Bozer, she encouraged him to find employment at the DXS. The Department of External Services isn't much of a place these days, ever since the Chrysalis mole, but at least they're trying to stand for something.

Officially, they don't exist. They change names every three years, have next to no budget, and are meant to be utterly anonymous and improvised, which is why they're hiring misfits like Becky and Ashton and Bozer. And another Jack, who in the tv version would be played by George Eads...but in this one, his last name is O'Neil. Because having two people named Jack Dalton in one story would be silly. 

(This isn't a Stargate crossover, but I liked the joke. Ashton has another ID named Carter, funnily enough...)

O'Neil is about MacGyver's age, and carries a chip on his shoulder about having been kicked off his sweet job on Delta Force for being gay- and for not being there when his best friend-and-maybe-something-more Daniel died in the Middle East. On a mission that Jack's sure he could have saved him from, had he been allowed to go. (Daniel looks like Michael Shanks, acts like the ‘16 version of Mac, and is definitely dead. Probably.) 

(The person who'd be played by Lucas Till is a boy named Luke, a perfectly ordinary guy and not-quite-romantic interest of Becky's from Mission City. He's still there.)

O'Neil also responsible for getting the DXS to bust Riley from the federal pen, as part of his deal for agreeing to work for them. Riley, funnily enough, is pretty much like her canonical self- only she's a computer hacker dealing with some rather less sophisticated tech. It being the early '90s, when not being on dial-up is Quite Something. 

Matty is deputy director of operations at the DXS, a role she rather chafes in because she knows she'd be rather better at it than the current director, Edward Gantner. Gant used to be a middlingly inefficient manager in the Department of Agriculture, and nobody realised the paperwork error that accidentally transferred him to the DXS until he'd already heard far, far too much to let him leave. These days he's the organisation's institutional memory, still less than efficient, and insists on treating everyone with a gentle sort of humanity that strikes everyone as basically weird. (Everyone except Becky, anyway; they get along like a house on fire.)

Unfortunately, Gant's general sloppiness has led to various issues over the years. Such as the untimely departure of his intended replacement, Pete Thornton, who gave up in disgust and moved to the Phoenix Foundation, to take a much better paid job as director of operations there- and bringing his brilliant protege Nikki Carpenter along too.

(In actuality, it was the other way around; Chrysalis cut a deal to hand over all the remotely interesting data that the DXS knew to Phoenix, in exchange for getting her and her mentor cushier and more interesting jobs.)

Pete never learned about this (he was too honourable to go along with a betrayal like that, which is why Nikki didn't tell him). Nor will he have the chance to find out; he's dead, in an altercation with his long-term adversary Murdoc that's left Nikki Carpenter swearing vengeance on the assassin. 

(Actually, it was Jack Dalton who fired the fatal shot, but he's keeping that quiet.)

In an ironic twist of fate, the new Phoenix director, Cindy Finnegan, immediately hires Murdoc and pairs him up with Nikki. As two of the most untrustworthy people in the intelligence business, she's relatively confident that one will kill the other as soon as they're given the least excuse to do so- and in the meantime, will make the best team Phoenix has ever seen. 

As is probably clear by now, this fic's version of the Phoenix is not an especially kind place. They have a rather devious habit of financing charitable organisations all over the world as cover for their agents. 

O'Neil has picked up an inkling of this from various sources, including Bozer, and is slowly and painfully working out a long-term plan to take Phoenix down for good. Especially Nikki.


	3. Who's Who in the AU

_ From the classic series _

Angus MacGyver (Mac)

Jack Dalton

Peter Thornton

Nikki Carpenter

Penny Parker

Harry and Celia Jackson

James and Ellen MacGyver

Murdoc

Ellen Stuart

Ralph Jerico

Michelle Forrester (Mike)

Roxy and Carla Yates

Ashton Cooke

Betty Parker

Wilton Newberry

Chuck

Faith and Hope

Helen

Cindy Finnegan

Nicholas Helman

Cynthia

 

_ At the DXS (some from the 2016 version, see Ch. 2 for explanation) _

Director Edward Gantner (Gant)

Deputy Director Matilda Webber (Matty)

Agent Jack O'Neil

Agent Samantha Cage (aka Ashton Cooke)

Agent Riley Davis

Agent Wilt Bozer

 

_ From elsewhere _

Carl Kolchak

Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce

B.J. Hunnicutt

Charles Emerson Winchester III

Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan

Maxwell Klinger

Walter "Radar" O'Reilly

 

_ Original characters _

_Family:_

Rebecca Ellen Grahme (Becky)

Dr. Allison Cassandra Grahme, Ph.D., née MacGyver (Allie)

Michael David Grahme

Christopher James Grahme (Chris)

 

_In Mission City:_

Hans (postmaster)

Sergeant Olson (police)

Eudora Krebsbach (town librarian)

Dr. Ingqvist

David and Ruth Forrester

Audrey Yates

Katie Lynch  
  
Luke Aidell

 

_Antagonists:_

Darryl Tollefsen

Lori Saperson

Nelson Davies

 

_Others:_

Uncle Charlie Dalton

Penny's parents

Brian Malinowski (Grahme family lawyer)

Margaret Doyle (social worker)

Dell

Dr. Webber (Allison's obstetrician, no relation to Matty)


End file.
